


noël

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [42]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War I, Angst, Christmas Truce of 1914, M/M, remix eligible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9263810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: WW1 AU. December, 1914. On Christmas Eve, Arthur dreams of home.Written for Winter Knights 2016.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** Period-specific bigotry and references to off-screen violence.

 

 

On Christmas Eve, Arthur dreams of home.  
  
It is a good dream, full of warmth and hope, and when he wakes it is with a vague sense of disappointment, although he cannot remember specifically what he dreamed. The sky is grey and flat, the countryside around them white with freshly fallen snow, and somewhere out over no-man’s-land, the Germans are singing.  
  
“Carols, sir,” Gwaine says, when Arthur emerges from his dug-out, his winter coat pulled close at the neck against the chill. “They’ve been at it for hours now.”  
  
“Well, it is Christmas,” Arthur says. He lights up a cigarette, chasing the tail end of the warmth from his dream, and settles onto an upturned ammunitions crate beside the sharpshooter. “Any action?”  
  
“None, sir.” Gwaine never bothers with more than a half-hearted salute, which should probably annoy Arthur more than it does. “Some sporadic gunfire over the hill, but otherwise everything’s quiet. If it weren't for the Boche singing, I’d’ve thought we’d all gone deaf.”  
  
“It is a queer feeling,” Arthur agrees. “And there’s nothing in the pipeline?”  
  
“Leon says not.” Gwaine shrugs. “I expect all the brass hats are busy at their Christmas dinner. Don’t want to give themselves indigestion, thinking about us poor blokes dying in the trenches while they feast themselves on goose liver and plum pudding. It’s all right for some, eh?”  
  
Arthur smiles. “Are you feeling homesick, Corporal?”  
  
“Not so much homesick as kitchen-sick.” Gwaine tips his head back and exhales, a thin stream of mist in the cold air. “I’d give my right arm for a home-cooked meal.”  
  
“I’d settle for a warm one, myself,” Arthur says ruefully. His hands and feet are numb. Frost glitters on the sandbags lining the trench, the ground underfoot churned into a glacial muck where the men have trampled it back and forth overnight. For a moment, firelight flickers in Arthur’s memory; a stone hearth, and someone laughing. “Still, beggars can’t be choosers.”   
  
Gwaine grunts. Across the intervening distance, the German chorus dies away, and after a long moment a lone stentorian voice starts up — English this time, ringing out with the first few lines of the familiar  _First Noël_. Arthur straightens abruptly.  
  
“That sounds like Percy,” he says, half incredulous. Percival is the quietest man he knows, as well as the tallest, yet his voice is unmistakable. Gwaine cocks his head, a slow smile spreading over his face.  
  
“So it does,” he says. “I didn’t think the old boy had it in him.”  
  
Other voices are joining in now, and Arthur peers down the trench to see half, perhaps three quarters of the men there paused to listen, a few of them already beginning to sing. Beside him, Gwaine follows along under his breath, one finger keeping time.  
  
“Not you too,” Arthur says, exasperated. “They’re supposed to be the enemy.”  
  
Gwaine just grins at him, tossing back his too-long hair. “You know what they say, Captain,” he says. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” He leans over and pats Arthur’s leg. “After all, it’s Christmas.”  
  
“So I’ve heard,” Arthur mutters, but doesn’t join in. Instead, he thinks of Camelot House in winter, the way Merlin would hum carols to himself as he worked; of Morgana in a white dress, slipping him a present on Christmas Eve just as she had done when they were children. It’ll be over by Christmas, they’d said, but not which Christmas. He drops his cigarette into the snow and crushes it with one foot, breathing in the icy winter air. In the morning, the guns will start up again, and instead of singing his men will be dying. In the morning, he will go back to worrying over unsent letters, to the cold that steals men in their sleep, and to the ever-broadening offensive that stretches out before them into a haze of uncountable days. For now, however, there is peace, the dome of the sky above them like a basilica, a light snow falling softly on the shattered earth as they sing.


End file.
